common sense – Page 7 – Kensho Homestead

More Foraged Favorites

Our dear Tori is a master forager. She’ll steal unreservedly from the melon and berry patches to the fig and mulberry trees, to even the unripe cucumbers and squashes.

Equally in the forest she is clearly divinely inspired–the perfectly ripe passion fruit she’ll scout, the bones get unearthed as her possessions no matter who has buried them, and she leads me to all the best bramble patches. The forest and our garden are her perpetual oysters–and while to see my melons walk away makes me want to cry, to her happy prance with edible treasure, well there is only to laugh!

And, apparently she’s not the only astute forager.

I love seeing how many foraging sites and blogs are currently flourishing. They inspire me to add on and spread the wealth.

Indian Strawberry

We have a big patch of these amiable volunteers just adjacent to the asparagus patch, natural companions, perhaps? In Scandinavia I met gardeners who insisted on planting their strawberries and asparagus and dill in the same space. I While these taste pretty bland compared to our cultivated varieties, they are still quite pretty, which is enough for me to spend the time to gather and prepare them.

I toss them in a salad with mulberries coming ripe at the same time. Or use them as a garnish with a spring weed pesto, along with the leaves, in moderation. Here’s a variation using chickweed, but it’s fun to get creative with whatever is in abundance.

https://nittygrittylife.com/eat-weeds-wild-weed-pesto/

Honeysuckle

While it is an invasive species for us in the southern U.S., at least it’s a useful one! While I’ve only made tea with it, some are patient enough to make jam. Maybe this will be the year I give that a try.

It’s also prized in traditional Chinese medicine.
(From: Dr. Mercola https://articles.mercola.com/herbs-spices/honeysuckle.aspx)

In TCM, the honeysuckle flower is commonly used to help ease the flu, colds and sore throat. According to Science Alert,¹¹ this plant has the ability to prevent the influenza virus from replicating. An animal study published in the journal Cell Research supports this, as it found that honeysuckle, when combined with a plant microRNA called MIR2911, was able to suppress swine flu and bird flu viruses effectively.¹²Xiao Er Ke Chuan Ling Oral Liquid (KCL), an herbal preparation that uses honeysuckle and nine other plants, was found to help treat acute bronchitis in children. A study in the Chinese Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine said KCL has antiviral, antibacterial and potent pharmacological actions.¹³Honeysuckle was also found to have wound-healing properties in rat models, according to the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine journal.

Sassafras

A quite undermined tree of the South, considering its illustrious origins and conspiratorial fate. It is a tree widely cultivated in Asia-Pacific as an essential ingredient to the popular drug, or versions of it anyway, generally called “ecstasy”.

At first, like cannabis, it was classified among the most harmful of substances by the FDA, though our ancestors had previously been very acquainted and attached to these and so many other suddenly ‘dangerous’ plants. Then while they were deemed “carcinogenic” by our government, simultaneously expanding was its cultivation in foreign countries. This was actually before “Poppy Bush” but perhaps setting that very precedent for the former president?!

While I’ve no idea how to make the popular street drug, I can assure you it makes a deliciously fragrant tea, traditional root beer, and gumbo filé powder.

Mullein

One of the few things growing strong all winter in the South is one of the classic remedies of the typical seasonable winter ails–upper respiratory infections, cough, sinus, and so on. Go figure, mother nature to the rescue.

Yaupon

As a tea it rivals the Lipton or Lausanne you are paying good money for, it really does. It does contain caffeine and was used among the native populations regularly and as an alternative to coffee in hard times among new settlers. Drying it for a just a couple of days before roasting makes the process quicker, but roasting isn’t necessary if you like a more mild ‘green tea’ taste. The beauty is, it’s prolific and harvestable all-year-round for humans, and for the bees they have a reliable early forage in spring. Just don’t eat the berries!

Spring weed pesto and/or chimichurra sauce

Of course we love our traditional basil-based pesto with pine nuts, such a classic. But, whatever’s available in our time/space, we use it! Walnuts or pecans can replace the pricey pine version, or skip the nuts altogether. I often leave out the parmesan too (my own homemade of course), and either add that last minute, if appropriate, or make more of a chimichurri-style sauce, so yum!

We both love a combination of wild and cultivated plants and I let them blend altogether in the garden and in the sauce. Chervil, parsley, cilantro, or maybe arugula generously and gorgeously partnered with wild violet, chickweed, wild rose petal, or whatever is out there! Once prepared it’s a delicious condiment for meats, a base for dressing and marinade, or a sauce, stand-alone or blended, an instant topping for eggs or toast. It freezes really well too.

https://draxe.com/recipe/chimichurri-recipe/

Let your local, seasonal nature be your greatest guide. 🙂

A few favorite resources:

Idiot’s Guides Foraging by Mark Merriwether Vorderbruggen, PhD
http://www.foragingtexas.com

https://www.growforagecookferment.com/forage

https://sustainabledish.com

Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer

Collective Utopia vs. Private Idaho

I lost my last hive just a few weeks ago, mysteriously. They dutifully pollinated the pears before their departure, sweet little creatures they are. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave a note, or much clue. I hope they swarmed and found a suitable new happy home, but I believe from what little evidence remained, that this was not the case.

The drama of the bees has been droning on now for decades. But of course, have no fear, technology comes to the rescue! First create the problem, then try to fix it while creating 3 new problems–that’s the modern, strategic, scientifically-advanced model at work.

Problem with disappearing bees? Solution, robot bees!

http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-robot-bees-farming-patent-2018-3

The next big thing according to TV’s famed Dr. Oz, is the RFID chip. Keep losing your Alzheimer parent? Get ’em the chip!

Steve Hoffman gushes over the new tech which will allow our minds to merge with one another. He calls it ‘almost like heaven’—a state of all-inclusiveness with others where our individuality is traded and usurped by the collective, to the extreme degree we can actually feel another’s pain as our own.

But, only if we choose it, of course. Right. That’s good, because mark my words, I don’t want to be in his mind, and I certainly don’t want him, or anyone, invading mine at will either.

Will we get to choose? I’m pretty doubtful on that point. Right now, do I get to choose whether my region is cloud-seeded, or not? Nope. https://weathermodificationhistory.com/

Do I get to choose whether Walmart creates robot bees? Nope.

Do I get to choose whether scientists experiment with technology meant to replace nature, meant to manipulate the environment beyond measure, meant to research consciousness with the intention of controlling it, even replacing it? Nope, nope and nope.

Dr. Andreagiovanni Reina, Research Associate in Collective Robotics in the University of Sheffield’s Department of Computer Science, said: “This study is exciting because it suggests that honey bee colonies adhere to the same laws as the brain when making collective decisions.

“The study also supports the view of bee colonies as being similar to complete organisms or better still, superorganisms, composed of a large number of fully developed and autonomous individuals that interact with each other to bring forth a collective response.

“With this view in mind, parallels between bees in a colony and neurons in a brain can be traced, helping us to understand and identify the general mechanisms underlying psychophysics laws, which may ultimately lead to a better understanding of the human brain. Finding similarities between the behavior of honey bee colonies and brain neurons is useful because the behavior of bees selecting a nest is simpler than studying neurons in a brain that makes decisions.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22616-y

Is it for a love of nature and mankind that science and technology seek to study it so thoroughly and in this particular direction? Or, is it with the intention of replacing nature and mankind for the benefit of god knows whom?

Do they ever ask themselves if we all have the same vision of a collective utopia?

As they preach for the essential Oneness of humanity, the love and light of unity, the exalted state of community, the Kumbaya collusion of the hive, the higher consciousness of the collective, do they consider as well the famed quote by a character in one of Jean Paul Sartre’s most read plays, “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” (“Hell, it’s other people.”)

As they profess their profound compassion and concern, do they care that some of us don’t care to live with robotized nature? Have they considered putting their intellectual efforts toward saving nature, co-creating with nature, relating equally to it, rather than commanding it, deconstructing it, subjugating it, destroying and replacing it?

Do they tread so shallowly in their own individuality that they cannot conceive of the notion that one’s relationship to oneself and to nature is by far greater, more fundamental and essential, than one’s relationship to any other?

Keep your robots, your synthetics, your hive mind, your Internet of Things, your technological collective Utopia, I don’t want it.

Many of us don’t want it, but we seem to have no choice in the matter.

If I weren’t an optimist, I’d feel we are doomed here on the wee homestead; doomed to watch as we are driven from the heaven of creating our own private Idaho into the hell of another’s version of ‘progress.’

My idea of progress:

Companion planting 3.0 (gardening by aesthetics) — cultivars co-existing with native volunteers (yes, I mean weeds); edibles among poisons; annuals with perennials with crops, seasonal ‘layering’. More on all that coming soon!

Handy Hubby’s idea of progress:
Spending his entire vacation building! Color me impressed. 🙂

Getting Real (part 2)

Handy Hubby says my first attempt to burst your bubble was too long and dry to have the desired effect. I agree, bless his heart, so here I try anew.

Again, as in part 1, I quote from The Paradox of Progress, available online to anyone thanks to the efforts of the National Intelligence Council and intended to inform the incoming U.S. President, among others of course.

From page 197:

“Global governance of common-pool resources such as public health, water, food and other key resources will inevitably challenge current ideas of privacy, control and power.”

Let’s just consider that one sentence for this post—how’s that for short and sweet, my dear?

The entire notion of global governance was considered the territory of conspiracy theorists until quite recently, except by only those few most in-the-know, meaning the powers-that-shouldn’t-be, who’ve had that agenda, and been planning and discussing that agenda, even openly, since WWII, at least.

robbers — “I wonder how much I can steal before they shoot me?”

Now we hear within the next decade the precious moment will have arrived, according to those paid to know and plan such ‘challenges.’

lineup — Old farmer’s adage: *Control the food, control the water, control the animal.*

Centralized control of the world’s resources, held in the hands of an un-elected yet ‘official’ government to which all nations and people will surrender their current ideas of privacy and power. How does that sound to you?

One ultra-huge government to control all the other governments of the world.

How do you find it now trying to get Washington, DC to act in your interest?

Do you already feel powerless in trying to get those GMOs labeled? Or in getting your voice heard on weather manipulation and climate engineering? Or in understanding how constant wars around the world are an advantage to the average citizen? Or in holding criminals in government accountable?

on duty — *“How many times must I repeat myself? The fox is guarding the hen house.”*

Or in finally and once in for all putting an end the recurring waves of pedophiles and sex traffickers in powerful positions, or in constant financial corruption, or in the dismal protection of property rights and stewardship of our environment?

birdsofafeather — Birds of a feather flock together!

If you don’t feel powerless against the establishment already, it’s because you haven’t yet tried to go up against it, even in the most remote fashion.

lillambs — That sounds like a big job for a lil’ lamb.

If you do already feel powerless, now imagine that powerlessness exponentially worse as the strings of the control system move permanently away from the vestiges of what’s left of the public’s meddling grasps at authentic law and order, by those precious few still futilely working to replace the current state of perpetual posturing.

notme — “That’s not my trash.” “Me either, I didn’t do it!”

Should you find yourself curious or concerned about the global government being planned for us you may choose to do some online research. If so, and if this is new to you, you will most certainly fall over the first stumbling block very quickly. That is, all the morons screaming, “It’s the Jews!”

To appease for these loudmouths, shills and disinfo agents you might feel tempted to call your favorite Jewish friend or neighbor and assure them you don’t think it’s the Jews. It might make you both feel better about the whole thing in advance.

And then get down to some serious research.

Before you get tempted to point any fingers at all, at any group, for any reason, remember that groups are made up first of individuals. Maybe that Jewish friend might even like the idea of a world government, some do. That’s fine.

So then let’s get some good, open, very public debates going about it on the national media. Because, we are a free country still, right? We have a functioning, unbiased media informing the public of those things that should most concern us, right?

That is the illusion we are currently and have been being sold for many decades now. Yet here is the National Intelligence Council telling us to expect world government within the next decade while the average American citizen still thinks this is a conspiracy theory thanks to our media.

prisonplanet — “Hey, who put that black wall there?”

When you start your research, you may want look at what’s happening right now, in cities like Santa Rosa and New Orleans. These are considered to be the great models of Disaster Capitalism. All coming soon to a city near you.

“Global governance of common-pool resources such as public health, water, food and other key resources will inevitably challenge current ideas of privacy, control and power.”

It is intended to envelop every nook and cranny of the countryside too, with the Internet of Things and the 5G grid. They sell us the benefits and conveniences, but always leave undisclosed the potential and even imminent dangers.

Will you lounge passively as the string-pullers draw up our last vestiges of power and autonomy, sovereignty and local and self-reliance?

My personal opinion is Jesus will not save you, or anyone else. But, unfortunately that’s bound to be your next stumbling block.

Of course, the National Intelligence Council could be wrong.

Or, global government could be marvelous. But, as for us on the wee homestead, on that remote chance we’re just not willing to bet our bacon.

The Case Against Love

Perhaps you will think this is just a battle of semantics. But, I do not think such battles are futile. Words matter. According to popular theories like Neuro-Linguistic Programming they matter significantly, much more than many of us realize.

But, the appropriate naming of a thing is conditional upon understanding this thing, especially when it is as abstract and ephemeral, as defined and debated, as love is.

Maybe sometime in prehistoric, more intuitive times, this was hardly necessary, but today it is. Since the ‘Positivity movement’ – an orchestrated top-down push by social engineering think-tanks like the Tavistock and Esalen Institutes, Theosophical Society, among many others—love has become a very loaded word in the West. By grand design.

Love is the answer. Love will save the world. Love conquers all. Love the one your with. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yet love is far too loaded a word to make it the salvation of mankind, let alone the multiverse.

This love-pushing is yet another slight of hand by the power structure, and it seems some of most well-versed and well-intentioned in matters of social programming are still falling for this ruse.

Yes, I will name names, of some of my favorites, and boldly so. James Corbett, Ole Dammegard, Patrick Roddie are among those who have recently rekindled this fog of love. These men are working impressively hard to ameliorate the system, but still insisting love is the answer.

These love lovers come from a very long tradition, Martin Luther King preached constantly of love. From the ancient Greeks to Mary Baker Eddy to today’s New Agers who preach incessantly of agape all march right in step with loads of spiritual and even some secular doctrine to boot.

Crossing every musical genre, every soap opera, through environmental and social movements, through philosophers, preachers, psychiatrists, we have been brainwashed and further confused about what this world really needs.

All we need is love? Not by a long shot!

Here’s what I think: You are all terrifically wrong and embarrassingly so. Please allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, ‘love’ does not translate well, even among Western languages. ‘Te quiero’ the expression most used in Spanish for ‘I love you’ actually translates better as ‘I want you.’ In French the verb for love is “aimer” translated both as ‘to like’ and ‘to love.’

Love does not translate well through time and space either, it evolves differently over time, place and circumstance. There are 4 kinds of love according to the Bible, 8 according to the ancient Greeks, 7 according to Psychology Today magazine.

Which type is it, I wonder, do we expect to work to solve the world’s ills?

There is the unrequited love of the troubadours, the erotic love equated with infatuation, platonic love, familiar love, and I could go on. And on! A single word with so many variables is a really bad idea for slogans and songs about saving the world. Or a really good one, if you want to remain pathetically ineffective.

Everyone understands love, they insist. We’ve all felt love, they assure us. But that too is a big fat lie. Unfortunately, there are many lonely souls in the world who do not understand love at all and who haven’t any capacity to either receive love, or to give it.

Love is passive, remarkably so. Love is a word over-used to the point of abuse and even contains what most of us today consider malevolent, as in the high form of love according to the ancient Greeks, pederasty, the love between a man and an adolescent boy. We must of course mention the unmentionable as well, in terms of love, that disgusting master of headlines and hatred, pedophilia, the ‘love’ of prepubescent children.

Clearly folks, the answer is not love, not familial love, or romantic love, or sexual love, or cosmic love, or love of man, freedom, god, king or country.

The answer is simply not, in any way, shape, or form, love!

The answer is care.

Care takes out the selfishness and passivity inherent in love. A universal word in the way love never will or can be. It is understood across borders and across generations. Care is independent of love’s baser quality of desire, many times we must care whether we desire it or not.

We care for, we care about, we care to, or not to. Care is a very active word, it embodies and requires action.

Give it a try, just to test my hypothesis. Next time you are inclined to use the word ‘love’ try ‘care’ instead. Instead of saying ‘I love nature’ say “I care about nature.”

Instead of saying “I love that child” say “I care for that child.”

It works especially well with my greatest pet peeve with the word—instead of saying ‘Love your enemy’ try ‘Care about your enemy.’

Does that not feel more right?

Because, I do! I can say that with full honesty and integrity—I care about my enemy. I care what he’s doing so I might prevent it. I care what he thinks, what he says, how he says it, where he goes, in fact, I care about every move he makes, so that I can triumph over him.

There is nothing triumphant about loving your enemy, it’s the equivalent of surrendering to him, because authentic love requires surrender, and everything else is just paying lip-service to love.

Food for thought: Let’s try some songs and preaches and speeches about care for a change.

newmama — Care is even understood trans-species!

The Slippery Slope of Equality

Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted to vote. She wanted to own property, and she wanted a career that was not nursing or teaching or whoring or mothering.

She was a courageous and independent woman who knew other courageous and independent women who agreed with her. They achieved the right to vote, the right to own property, and established themselves in a variety of occupations across every sector of society.

Fast forward a few generations and they became Supermoms. Mothers could do it all–have a family, have a career–just like fathers. Then the women began to complain that the housework needed to be shared, it was only fair. Machines to make the work easier and faster were invented, primarily by men, to try to satisfy these new preferences of women’s time.

Soon, women wanted to share in the glories of war along side men. They wanted to sit beside them in the boardrooms, play next to them on the golf courses, hang out in their clubs. They modeled their hierarchies, their whims, and their habits. They wanted to smoke, to drink, to travel, to carouse, to order subordinates, to manage affairs, and to control it all, just like the men.

The laws were changed to reflect ‘equality’ between the sexes. The laws were not sufficient. Women continued to get harassed by men in the workplace, groped on the bus, humiliated with lower pay for equal work, and sometimes even physically endangered.

This angered the women tremendously and they revolted. They pointed and screeched at their male bosses and their former and current colleagues and smeared their reputations publicly and had them fired and humiliated and cursed. Just as they deserved. They demanded an end to violent, colonizing, capitalizing, age-old white male patriarchy.

**The women called themselves ‘happy‘ and ‘fulfilled‘ but oddly began using anti-depressants by the millions.**

Still, they took their hard-earned and rightful positions at the head of the table in the boardrooms and backrooms and brothels.

But still, the men were not behaving!

Just like children, they started acting out even worse. They started secretly undermining the women in power. They started to rebel in closed groups. They choose in growing numbers not to get into relationships with women. They began to consider the women dangerous. One false move and they risked losing everything in the courts of law.

Some men turned despondent, others violent, others exceptionally determined. The women decided to drug them, it was the only way.

The drugs had some unpleasant side effects. Men’s health began to decline, but women saw this as a good thing; they were more docile and less combative that way. They began to drug the boys as well. It seemed the younger they started the more predictive became the results.

Some men were incurable it seemed, so more drastic public measures had to be taken. Those who would not stop oogling women were forced to wear special goggles that limited their peripheral vision by 50%. It was considered a great achievement and sold brilliantly in the marketplace. There were other great women’s inventions as well, like a male chastity belt, and various electric shock devices that could be used as discreetly as a tampon.

Then one day a woman complained. “Where have all the men gone?”

Keyboard Warrior in Training

Spend any time at all sharing information on the Internet, or commenting on Youtube posts, or debating topics on a forum and you will find hostile folks.

Maybe some of them might rightly be called ‘haters’ but the truth of the matter is we have so long been trained in this culture to be nice and tolerant and bite our tongues and turn the other cheek and what we’ve created with this is not more niceness but more inability as individuals and groups to handle criticism, even valid criticism.

I heard this old adage plenty of times growing up: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Nonsense!

I am guilty myself of becoming too annoyed and heated at times dealing with morons, shills and assholes. I often have to take a step back and remind myself, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

Now is the time every one of us could be starting a revolution from our beds. We are safe from the sticks and stones and can become completely resilient to the name-calling.

The straw that broke this camel’s back? I left my teaching career because the education system has become so pathetic that we were ordered to no longer correct student grammar in my beginning Spanish and French university courses, because to be corrected ‘hurts students’ feelings’. It was a new department-wide policy supposedly deemed necessary due to falling enrollment numbers.

If you are a student whose feelings get hurt because you are learning something new and need to be corrected, you should not be at university, you should go back to kindergarten.

Time to grow up and speak up, America! Let’s bring this kakistocracy down, one keyboard warrior at a time.

Internet Enemy #1: The pooh-slinging shills. Learn their tactics, stand up to them, become a fearless keyboard warrior! 🙂

Diet Pushing, Politics and Pigs

Warning: This post contains images and commentary potentially unsavory or offensive to vegetarians and vegans.

My most used cookbook has a provocative title–Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon.

I am not a diet pusher; I am a critic of diet pushing. I’ve long had an interest in diet and nutrition and like most Americans, by the age of 30 I’d heard it all said by the slogans of the diet dictocrats. Eat beef. Don’t eat beef. Eat eggs. Don’t eat eggs. Drink milk. Don’t drink milk. Watch your calories. No, watch your fats. Watch your sugar. No, watch your salt. No, make that sugar and salt. Caffeine causes cancer. Caffeine doesn’t cause cancer. Wine is good, or bad. Grains are good, or bad. I could go on for pages here, but I know you know what I’m talking about. Nutrition science is right up there with environmental science as being ever-changing and ever-controversial.

Currently the diet pushers are promoting vegetarianism and veganism. I say currently, though it goes back many decades, because it seems to be hitting a crescendo lately. As a case in point, a sociology professor demonstrates just how political diet can be, arguing in a recent article that eating meat perpetuates ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘gender hegemony’.

“To study the link between masculinity and meat, DeLessio-Parson interviewed 23 vegetarians who live in Argentina to probe how they deal with their country’s “meat-centric” culture, finding that being vegetarian itself is a political act.”

“Refusing meat therefore presents opportunities, in each social interaction, for the [gender] binary to be called into question.”

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10221

My immediate thought, after laughing out loud, was: “So if meat represents ‘hegemonic masculinity’ does dairy represent ‘hegemonic femininity’?”

But jokes aside, what I find most interesting about the vegetarian/vegan phenomenon is that it has so deeply penetrated a few sectors of society where it seems to me to be terribly misplaced: libertarianism, anarchism, paganism, and even among homesteading/sustainability advocates.

I have no criticism to direct at these groups and individuals making their choices to enjoy whatever diet and lifestyle they wish. Many vegetarians and vegans choose this diet for valid ethical and health reasons and I applaud this conscious choice on their parts.

My issue is when, and why, and how, diet becomes a tool of politics. And especially, when those politics are propagandizing and peddling false information.

There are many others out there with this same concern besides Sally Fallon. Some other powerful players have also spent considerable time and research adding to the conversation, like Michael Pollan, Wenonah Hauter, Marion Nestle, Nina Teicholz, Joel Salatin, among many more.

The only thing I can add to the wealth of knowledge already out there is my personal experience and opinion living now very close to the land and our own food sources for many years: Veganism is antithetical to sustainable agriculture, permaculture, homesteading, and any other system or worldview where decentralization is a valued goal.

Here is why, in words and pictures.

Growing grains and legumes requires vast expanses of managed land that is kept free from predators and pests. Our fruits and vegetables require keeping out the vast and varied competition from deer, rabbits, squirrels, feral hogs, birds, rodents and insects of all sorts. Eating vegetables and grains does not equate to NOT killing animals. You’re simply killing/trapping/disrupting other wild creatures other than the omnivores do.

farmscene.cz — Rape-seed (canola) fields, Moravia 1994

If it is not local, it is not sustainable. Pineapples from Hawaii, kiwis from Australia, grapes from Chile, grains from India–these are all great luxuries and it’s a treat to be able to enjoy them thanks to modern technology and transport. But anarchists and voluntaryists, pagans, homesteaders and all those who understand and recoil at the undue influence of Government power in our daily lives surely understand that without local control of sustainable food production the community, family and individual are forever at the mercy of a centralized system.

If it’s not local, if it’s not sustainable, it should be understood as the icing, not the cake. Leave the icing to Big Brother if you must, but certainly let’s get his hands out of the cake!

These skillsets have been lost and need to be reclaimed–it’s how we all got here, after all. Proper handling of a gun, knife, heavy carcass is skilled labor and if it’s men who are more capable and interested in handling these chores, praise be to the heavens, I say. This doesn’t mean every man must want to do these things, but it certainly means we should not be discouraging them with nonsense about meat as synonymous to a brutal patriarchy.

Vegetables, grains, fruits, most things that grow need good soil. Good soil is created with compost, manure and other fertilizing elements which, in the amount required for the large tracts of land required to produce grains efficiently, and in the absence of farm animals’ excrement, must be purchased, most likely from large corporations.

Cui bono, or, for whose benefit?

In the case of a truly sustainable setting there are many benefactors to a family’s pig slaughter: the dogs, the poultry, the vultures, the insects and the soil. Not to mention the human guests, of course.

In the case of a vegan diet? Big Ag benefits most of all. I know many vegans are well-meaning and will bristle at that comment, but this is just the plain truth. No small local farmer can compete with grain and vegetable prices of big ag. While it’s true they can’t compete with the meat prices either, in our case currently, and in most places without an ideal growing climate, pound per pound, meat is cheaper and easier to produce than vegetables or grains.

With the on-going geoengineering assault on the weather, I expect this will become more true in the immediate future. Even worse, I expect in less than a decade we will all be forced to grow vegetables indoors as the weather will become too unpredictable for even hobby and homestead gardeners to have reliable produce.

decrosentori — Roses blooming in December, and snow in south Texas = weather whiplash (geoengineeringwatch.org)

Not only do we get to enjoy the ribs, and the hams, and the bacon, oh my, but also the lard, the cracklins (aka chicharones or pork rinds), and the happy dogs when they get pork instead of poultry for a change.

on walk — Advice on last week’s evening news: Feed your dogs raw carrots for treats because bones, skin and fat are bad for them. Someone should really inform dogs of this preference, I don’t think they know it yet.

Want to challenge the diet dictocrats? Want the politics off your plate? Don’t go vegan, go hyper-local!

Here’s a good place to start:

https://www.westonaprice.org/

Best business idea I’ve seen all year, most impressive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9Zsqo9K3w&t=28s

Reclaiming Time: Part IV, Finale

There is no greater luxury than time. When we give our time we are giving our energy, our single most precious resource as individuals. I wish I’d understood that better far sooner in life.

I can’t turn back the clock to make up for that, but I can make certain to never sell my time so cheaply again. I see now how I, and a good many more, confused the game with reality. It would also seem, in terms of numbers and the obvious direction culture is heading, that this confusion is getting far worse.

I grew up in a fantasy-based reality, where, as I said in part 1, the artificial, man-made construct of time had long since replaced not only my own internal clock, but the clock of nature as well. I spent an enormous amount of time at school, much of that which I now consider wasted. I spent a good deal of my youth watching television and reading fiction. I spent a fair amount of time in young adulthood experimenting with altered states of consciousness, exploring a bit of the world and a bit of my own mind. That was actually loads of fun, which I cannot regret anymore than I could have continued.

Now in middle age I have a new goal and agenda centered on my own re-education. This to me is reclaiming time and I do it not out of loneliness or boredom, nor to indoctrinate others, nor in the aim of becoming an authority figure, nor even to make money—all of which I have been repeatedly accused and none of which mean anything to me in these pursuits. I do it because it needs to be done, according to the small, still voice of Self.

That I should have the occasion now to do this necessary work fills me with gratitude and even awe. As an unexpected rainbow might stop one in her tracks, or make her hurry back for the camera, I gaze with gratitude at the long empty hours in front of me each morning, ready and waiting to be filled with my heart’s greatest longings: extended walks in the woods with the dogs; spoiling the puppies as much as I dare; answering the phone, or not answering it; writing a blog post, or not; puttering in the garden; cooking something delicious, even if just for me and the critters.

Beyond nature as my companion, I also have many other teachers, ironically the majority of them brought to me by another fantasy-based reality: cyberspace.

From the viewpoint of some friends still enthralled with the fantasy-based reality matrix in which they reside, they find this disturbing. You will be alone on Thanksgiving? And Christmas? And you welcome this? Some even try to label this ‘depression’ or a ‘crisis’ of mid-life. What about family, friends, shopping?! I try to assure them: “No, really, I care not a hoot for the Black Friday specials, or Christmas gifts.” And as for friends and family, they know exactly where to find me.

This Thanksgiving I wish to express my deepest gratitude to he who is making this luxury of time possible, that is Hubby, whose absence and employment are both a gift and a curse. Not a day goes by where I do not marvel at the journey we’ve made together and where it has brought us. I could’ve never predicted it nor imagine how suited to me it could become.

cheeseYT — Me, a cheese-maker? Didn’t see that comin’!

I also want to show my very sincere gratitude to those out in the cyber-world making my re-education easier, more accessible, more entertaining and thought-provoking than it otherwise could have been. These individuals have gone to such incredible lengths to offer their great contributions to knowledge and humanity, not only against the current paradigm, but as serious matters of conscience, and using the most innovative gifts of modern technology available to them. For this modeling I am unreservedly impressed and inspired.

Dane Wigington at Geoengineering Watch: a powerful and tireless voice against geoengineering and for a more responsible relationship by humans with our environment. I would be hard-pressed to find a more consistent and honorable advocate for nature and sanity.

Alex Tsakaris at Skeptico, where have you been all my life?! I just found his site last month. And after the very long series of posts where I was attempting to better understand the nature and frauds of science, I now finally have a solid guide through the territory that most inspires me, expressed in his tagline: “intelligent discussion on science and spirituality.” I’m now a happy member on his forum site after only one previous miserably failed attempt in the world of forums.

Still a favorite after all these years, thank you James! A gifted writer who uses his many talents in devotion to truth–my favorite shows being those in which he demonstrate his extraordinary wit and creativity.

https://www.corbettreport.com/5-unbelievably-stupid-ideas-governments-actually-tried/

https://www.corbettreport.com/solutions-laughing-at-tyrants-video/

https://www.corbettreport.com/shut-up-conspiracy-theorist/

I have recently praised the work of Michael Tsarion and David Whitehead at Unslaved.com, but I would be remiss not to mention them again now. Tsarion gets a baffling amount of criticism, but I’ve found his work, especially on the Tarot, to be invaluable. Now that he has teamed with Whitehead he is grounding into the topics I find most necessary today–personally, politically, intellectually, spiritually, physically. There is an uncanny synthesis in their shows together, maybe based in the inter-generational aspect of it, and that they so often draw from history yet underscore its continued relevance, but definitely in the shared vision that what’s required to move forward and make a better world has been right under our noses and at our fingertips all along. I have learned an enormous amount from them about the nature of evil and the capacities required to usurp it. Thank you, gentlemen, oh how the world needs you now!

Another one I must thank is Crrow777. While definitely not for the faint of heart, they are very much on the cutting edge and I can’t help but to respect that. They are now battling censorship and taking it on like true spiritual warriors. For those ready for a heavy dose of deconstruction, take a deep dive into their waters!

Jon Rappaport (nomorefakenews) I re-blog fairly regularly as he has my great respect as another man of honor with an inspiring dedication to, and passion for, truth. A veteran journalist, one could spend considerable time learning from his vast expanse of past and present work.

Finally, I want to take a deep bow to the greatest teacher by far that I’ve ever known, and will ever know, and which has taken me far too long to find: Nature.

It is in you my reality is centered and my energy devoted for the rest of my luxurious, reclaimed time in your exquisite home.

Reclaiming Time (part 3)

On becoming my own Authority

I have been fortunate enough to be able to fashion a life that affords me more freedom than the vast majority of the world’s population. While there was a fair degree of luck in this good fortune, there was also a fair degree of sacrifice, and I believe, a dash of ancestral wisdom.

Could it be because my Sir name is Shepard that I now find myself so comforted sitting among the pups and sheep? I’m not saying one has a destiny that could be decoded so simply as through a name, though I do think the clues to our destiny, individually and collectively, are all around us in every moment.

What it takes to see the clues is the very thing The System works to deny us: Unstructured time. The System calls this loafing.

Time to absorb, to reflect, to introspect, to daydream. Time to watch the sheep and the pups.

This is different from what The System does provide in order to replace unstructured time, which is Entertainment. Which, by its nature, is extremely well-structured.

I find the path the thoughts take in unstructured time is intrinsically connected to creativity, which is a joy in its own right and not necessarily a precursor to productivity.

Where my thoughts go, I imagine, are at once beyond time and space and amalgamation of time and space, co-creating the pathways to the Self.

In the Western world today there is loads of criticism directed at the narcissism of the youth. I believe this is primarily a grammatical and perception issue. Just because the younger generation prefers Selfies and the Internet more than old Westerns and glib conversation does not necessarily make them more narcissistic than previous generations.

I think they are searching for paths to Self that are becoming increasingly more difficult to sense as the social structure becomes increasingly hostile to individuality.

Or, maybe the social structures have always been hostile to individuation, and the youth, generation by generation, continue to claw away at that putrefying foundation.

Maybe, on the inside, with every social Selfie they scream, “I will be seen! My presence here will be recorded in time! I will matter!” They just can’t figure out how and why they will matter, because we lost that thread several generations ago.

Could it be they sense that time for them is running out? Could it be an act of desperation to record every moment and connect it somehow with the world at large? Could it be that we, of the older generations, in our criticism of their narcissism is a reflection of our own narcissism? Is it our own non-acceptance of a role that told us when we were children that which I heard so often in my own upbringing: “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Are we subtly sensoring them due to our own unprocessed fear? Are we repeating to them with our criticism, ‘don’t be the tall nail or you’ll get hammered down’? Or my personal favorite: “Don’t be so entitled.”

Who are the black sheep of today’s youth I wonder sometimes as I’m watching the sheep. Maybe that’s where our criticism should be directed. Where have they gone? Have we been so successful as a ‘civilization’ that we have managed to breed out the black sheep?

On becoming my own Authority I’ve realized I have an amazing gift of finding my own teachers when I’m left with my own instincts and unstructured time. This is often thanks to technology, but not always. There is so much knowledge being shared on Youtube that our television hangs nearly useless in the living room most days. I’d bet The System calls most of these at least arrogant, if not narcissistic. How dare they skirt the established hierarchy and create their own channels. How dare they question their social roles, or entice, indeed, provoke me to question mine. The System calls them just another nutter with a podcast. A so-called lone wolf or black sheep.

Here is one such ‘teacher of the week’ for me. I hope his narcissism peaks for many videos to come, because he’s got great gifts to share, just as we all do.

Michael Black was introduced to me by two other powerful teachers at Unslaved.com: Michael Tsarion and David Whitehead

https://unslaved.com/episode-47-give-us-solutions-feat-michael-black/

Below in the video The Endgame for the United States, Mr. Black talks about the inevitable MEGACITY of the near future and its myriad challenges according to the Pentagon.

He delves more into that pesky Progress and what it’s doing to the individual and the world. He advises one thing here I am inclined to advise against, which is, leave here if you can.

Defeatism, I suggest, Mr. Black. Don’t undermine us, we just may have the ancestral wisdom and courage to stand and fight. If only we could get the youth to see there’s something here still worth fighting for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV45sOakhsI

Reclaiming Time (part 2)

pose.cz.square — Me 3rd from left with friends in front of the Prague Astronomical Orloy, 1995

I lived for decades at the command of Time, Inc. That’s how I understand it after nearly a decade now adjusting to the rhythm of nature. Before that I’d lived like most others in the post-industrial world with a calendar that was invented not by nature but by men. As a young student bells sent me scurrying from one room to another along with the rest of my peers.

I didn’t like it even then, didn’t understand it, though I was always curious and loved learning. But as I had known nothing else, as a university student I thought it a fantastic improvement to be free to walk from building to building based on my watch, free-range and bell-free.

I thought Time, Inc. was ingenious as it got me on the planes and trains and kept me punctual for my various social roles as a student, a teacher, a patient, a shopper, a volunteer, and the various other obligations of ‘she who is participating.’ The clock got me to the concerts on time.

“Get in the game!” was the advice from all directions. I did sometimes question this word, ‘the game.’ Is that what this is?

I have never been a big player of games; I don’t particularly like them. At one point it occurred to me, so, if this really is a game, I can choose whether or not to play?

So, slowly, little by little, I began to remove myself from the game. Like all games the ones who’ve created the game make the rules. It is only a one who follows the rules who wins the game. You may scoff at this analogy now and say, but there’s so much corruption and crime and it clearly pays, so it’s actually breaking the rules which gets one ahead. If this is what you are thinking, you haven’t yet understood the game. The game is working as it is meant to function.

I figured not only did I not make the rules of the game, I don’t particularly like it and I started to resent all the advice that insisted I continue playing it. Seems logical enough that you can’t win a game if you don’t like playing it. Or, maybe you can, but then you’d be winning just to win and not because you enjoyed playing. Not really my style.

Notice I have now started five paragraphs with “I.” I do this quite deliberately.

“I” is who I know, not you, not we, not them. To know oneself is not to know all men and this is part of the on-going collectivist brainwashing flooding the culture. We are not all one. We are not all in this together. We are not all created equal. In fact, we should, in my opinion, stop striving for equality altogether. It’s not working.

I admit, I was once one who said such things as this on my first website nearly 20 years ago: “Once we have leveled the playing field in education around the globe communication will flourish and then we can call ourselves One World.”

I had drunk the Kool-Aid. I really believed this then. I was too young and optimistic to understand that ‘leveling the field’ meant leveling it to the least common denominator, not the greatest. I did not understand Globalism at all and thought ‘One World’ sounded pretty awesome and fun.

I was a card-caring member of Time, Inc.

I remember one night on the exquisite Old Town Square in the Czech Republic gazing with a large group of tourists many an evening at the famed Prague Orloj, a working astronomical clock 600 years old. It was one of my favorite spots in the city, a city where I was lucky enough to live before the latest great invasion of mass tourism.

I remember what the Charles Bridge looked like at night in winter with only a handful of locals walking over it. Back then there was a free puppet show behind a makeshift stand under the bridge where I sat on the ground with a dozen children listening to them laugh, which was making me laugh. That was 1989. I have photos somewhere in a box that are mostly blurry or dark, sometimes in black and white, because that was the only film I could find there to buy.

Fast forward a decade, then two, and you can barely get over the bridge and it has become a sort of tourist marketplace. That pesky Progress at work again.

I’m not bitter, though I know I sound that way sometimes. I still have my memories, one of the few states which has remained, at least in part, at least for now, beyond Time, Inc.

So it was one night, as I said, on the exquisite Old Town Square gazing with a large group of tourists (not quite this large!) waiting for the Apostles on the clock to do their nightly dance, when an English-speaking drunken youth passes between the clock and the upward gazers, his back to the crowd, raises his arms in worship and slurs at the top of his lungs as it begins to chime on the hour, “Oh my God! Oh my God! OHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!” Falling to his knees theatrically then, to the astonishment and awkward chuckles and eye rolls from the crowd.

I laughed at the time, mostly at the audacity of it. Now I wonder if that sauced joker realized how genius his move actually was. And how memorable.

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The women called themselves ‘happy‘ and ‘fulfilled‘ but oddly began using anti-depressants by the millions.

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**The women called themselves ‘happy‘ and ‘fulfilled‘ but oddly began using anti-depressants by the millions.**